Monastic Records and the Dissolution: A Tudor Revolution in the Archives?. (July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Harding, Vanessa
• Is Part Of: European history quarterly. Volume 46:Number 3(2016:Jul.)
• Page Start: 480
• Page End: 497
• Publication Date: 2016-07
• Subjects: Archives -- England -- monastic property -- Reformation -- sixteenth century; Europe -- History -- Periodicals; 940
• DOI: 10.1177/0265691416648262
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0265-6914

Abstract

Administrative reform in the 1530s amounted, in Professor Geoffrey Elton's words, to a 'Tudor revolution in government'. The Dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of their assets played a major part in this. The need to value, survey, document and exploit the monastic estates transformed government record-keeping, necessitating the creation of new offices – such as the Court of Augmentations – and the adoption of new practices and an expanded bureaucracy. The paper traces the response of the bureaucrats to the challenges to record-management resulting from the Dissolution, and the subsequent history of the monasteries' records of landholding, a task complicated by the activities of later government archivists.